


take them and disappear

by travellinglinen



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Disclaimer I am not a psychologist, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Exiled TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Independence, Manipulation, Psychology, Running Away, Shulker boxes, Smart Tommy, Techno isn't part of the sbi family in this bc I can vibe with him and phil being old workmates, Tommy is underestimated and uses it to his advantage, Villain Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), doesthedogdie.com says the cow dies in this one sorry folks if it helps I'm also sad about it, dream: hello tommy i will be brainwashing you to love me and feel depressed, listen it'll be good just wait, this is not a nice first chapter but the rest of the fic will hopefully be much better, tommy: no thank you, tommy: years of techno's potato war have prepared me for this moment, uh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:22:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28596150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/travellinglinen/pseuds/travellinglinen
Summary: "What's this?"Tommy peers at the thing in Dream's hand and his heart drops to his feet. It's his compass, a bit battered from where Dream had destroyed the chests but still shining a stubborn silver in the torchlight. He can't see the engravedYour Tubbofrom here, the text tucked under Dream's thumb - and Ghostbur had had to point it out to him in the first place, so when Dream flips it over and studies the back Tommy holds his breath and forces himself to do nothing."Tommy," Dream says, finally looking up at him. He doesn't seem to have seen the engraving but he holds the compass in the air, expectant. "What's this?"His mind races.///Or, I accidentally wrote 2.3k (now 4.3k) of lowkey psychological warfare and now I'm using it to fix half of L'Manburg's problems
Comments: 44
Kudos: 578





	1. shielded

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [to be a wanderer, wandering](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28410378) by [ghostbandaids](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostbandaids/pseuds/ghostbandaids). 



> Help me I never write chaptered fics and now they're all I'm posting, what have I BECOME
> 
> Slight AU in that Ranboo isn't in L'Manburg yet! Go and read ghostbandaids' fic, it's incredible
> 
> EDIT: through planning this fic it's slipped even further away from ghostbandaids' fic, so consider this now as a very enthusiastic fic rec lmao. Ranboo is back in L'Manburg. Sorry everyone lol

"What's this?"

Tommy peers at the thing in Dream's hand and his heart drops to his feet. It's his compass, a bit battered from where Dream had destroyed the chests but still shining a stubborn silver in the torchlight. He can't see the engraved _Your Tubbo_ from here, the text tucked under Dream's thumb - and Ghostbur had had to point it out to him in the first place, so when Dream flips it over and studies the back Tommy holds his breath and forces himself to do nothing.

"Tommy," Dream says, finally looking up at him. He doesn't seem to have seen the engraving but he holds the compass in the air, expectant. "What's this?"

His mind races.

If Dream finds out that it's even the slightest bit valuable to Tommy, then he's done for. It'll be whisked away into Dream's inventory, used as a bargaining chip. Worse, if he finds out that it points to Tubbo's, as a linked pair, then Tommy is never going to hear the end of it. _Tubbo knows exactly where you are, exactly how to find you, and he hasn't, he hasn't, he hasn't._

He has to pretend it's worthless.

"Compass," he says, trying to give himself a _duh_ tone but not sure that he can get away with it. "Made a bunch of redstone blocks to save on space 'n I had one left over, so I made that."

Is that believable? Is he lying well enough?

Tommy knows Dream better than Dream thinks he does. He knows fairly well where the line is between 'this is valuable to Tommy, I can use it against him' and 'this is valuable to Tommy, he can use it to torture _himself.'_

His heart screams. Tommy pushes it down, down, down, and gives a halfhearted shrug.

"I just wanted to. . ." He trails off.

Dream adopts the fake-encouraging expression that makes Tommy feel sick. It's working. He hopes it's working.

"To see where home was," Tommy finishes, voice small.

"Oh, Tommy," Dream says. His voice is sickly-sweet, but Tommy can see a hint of gleeful teeth in his smile. He steps forwards and rests a hand on Tommy's shoulder. "L'Manburg isn't your home any more, you know that. They didn't want you. They exiled you, remember?"

"I remember," Tommy whispers.

"Even _Tubbo -"_ Dream's voice is acid. He startles instantly, like he hadn't meant to say that out loud, but Dream never does anything accidentally and Tommy had grown up with Techno, who had waged psychological war in the name of potatoes.

He knows the tricks.

"Sorry, Tommy," Dream is saying. Tommy wants to punch him. "I didn't mean to say that. Tubbo is just - um. Never mind. Here, you can have this back, right?"

The compass is pressed back into his hands. Tommy's heart is in his throat, eyes wide as he stares at the familiar needle, the new dent. He resists the urge to find Ghostbur's engraving and run his fingers over it, to reassure himself that it's still there.

"Keep it. To remind you of L'Manburg."

Dream leaves soon after that, cheerful with his new leverage. Tommy sits on his bed in Tnret and holds his compass so tightly that his knuckles goes white. 

_Tubbo had to have a reason. Fundy and Ranboo looked so horrified - they can't have been in on it. Nikki wouldn't have given you so many free things from her bakery if she hated you. Tubbo had to have a reason._

_He had to, he had to, he had to._

It's starting to sound stale. He can't tell if that's Dream's fault or his.

///

Another day, another explosion of his stuff.

Tommy's not sure how he can counter this - Dream watches him take his armour off and put it in the pit, so he can't fake that. And he shows up whenever he likes, so it's not even like Tommy can somehow get diamond armour and switch it out for iron whenever Dream's due.

He settles for hiding his good shit. When Dream finds him mining, Tommy lies and says that he's been going for fifteen minutes, half an hour, had just started, when in reality he's been working for hours. He lets Dream fake concern about his mining habits and steer him back to the surface. Dream doesn't tend to blow his stuff up if Tommy's been mining, especially not if he thinks it's only been minutes and there isn't much progress to ruin.

So Tommy lets Dream pull him around Logstead and tell him that all his friends hate him and want him dead, and then when Dream leaves he sits and shakes and says nothing.

After that, when he's sure that Dream's gone, he'll go and run into the woods to find another place to squirrel his stuff away.

"Nothing in the same place," Tommy whispers to himself, reminding. There are wild sheep near this stash, so there's a good reason for there to be a dirt block instead of grass. "Nothing too close together."

He's not stupid. He doesn't want to take any chances.

///

"You've been mining a lot."

They're in a cave system, somewhere. Tommy's pretty sure it's far away from Logstead - he'd run into this system after a long time strip mining. Dream had appeared behind him at some point, as he'd been going through and lighting it up.

"Yeah," Tommy says. "I ain't got no armour."

Dream had blown it up two days ago, and this is the first time he's been mining since then. The main spot he goes mining from is starting to look like some kind of swiss cheese, holes going this way and that, north and east and west and only a little bit south.

South is L'Manburg. Dream hadn't wanted him to run into anybody else's strip mines, in case they attacked him while Dream wasn't there to protect him, so he'd blocked them off with bedrock. Tommy had come down to sit next to it, before, and then one day he'd heard somebody mining on the other side, then stop and say, "What the fuck? This is high for bedrock."

They'd mined left and right, and there hadn't been an end to it. Tommy had followed them on his side of the wall, walking through his own carved-out attempts. Their voice had been difficult to figure out, but before he could get a good read he'd accidentally banged his elbow on the wall. They'd stopped and said, "Hello?", and he'd bolted before he could think twice about it.

"You know, Tommy," Dream says, like he's just thinking of it. "You don't really need armour."

Tommy stops mining coal to give him a genuine confused look. "What?"

"Well -"

Dream rubs the back of his neck. He's not sure if this will work: this is a test, then, of how far Tommy is under his thumb.

He's going to have to pass. Fuck.

"I can protect you, right?"

"You're not always there," Tommy says, then promptly wants to bang his head on the wall. He doesn't want Dream around more often! What is he doing?

But thankfully Dream just says, "I know," obviously focused on something else. "But you've been doing such a good job of lighting Logsteadshire up. If you just do that all over, then there's no way they can spawn even when I'm not there."

"That's a lot of torches," Tommy says slowly, thinking it over. It makes sense though - if he has less coal because it's all going into lighting up the place, then there's less chance for him to smelt iron and get resources. And if Dream keeps blowing up his chests, then. . .

"You won't need the coal for anything else," Dream says. _Bingo._ "Other than cooking food, I mean. But I can bring you that, right?"

Tommy feels like he's going to explode. Resentment and rage and nausea all swell inside him, begging to be let out, desperate to do _something._ He wants to destroy something, preferably Dream. He fantasises briefly about ripping that stupid mask off his face and smashing it, scraping it against the wall until it shudders into pieces, throwing the rest into lava. Dream has a comforting hand on Tommy's forearm. He wants to gnaw his fingers off with his teeth so that he can never touch him again.

Tommy fights to keep his face straight instead. He unclenches the hand on the other side of his body and lets it _shake_ where Dream can't see it.

"Alright," he says, the pit in his stomach so hollow that he thinks he's going to tumble into it. "I don't need armour."

Self-satisfaction spreads over Dream's face, visible even through the mask. Tommy goes back to mining the coal as if he hasn't noticed it, then moves on.

He hesitates over a vein of iron in the floor and Dream stops in the middle of some stupid story Tommy's only vaguely listening to.

"You don't need that, remember?"

"Right," Tommy says, shaking himself. "Sorry, Dream."

"That's alright. C'mon, I think there might be more coal around here."

Tommy skips over everything that isn't coal until Dream leaves, and then he goes running back through the caves and mines every single ore he'd skipped over, including the second vein of diamonds he'd spotted that Dream hadn't.

("Oh, thank you," Dream had said, plucking Tommy's diamonds out of his hands. These ones had been in the floor, unavoidable, and Tommy had mined them because he'd thought not doing it would have been more suspicious. "Fundy will love these."

Tommy's mouth had soured. He remembers sitting on top of a house with Fundy while he cried, listening to him vent. _Dream doesn't love me,_ Fundy had said, tears wetting their fur in streaks. _He doesn't care._ Tommy hadn't had anything to say to that, not really, so he'd said that Fundy's friends cared even if Dream didn't, and that "if he doesn't love you then he has to be all blind and shit," which had made Fundy laugh and get tears all over Tommy's favourite shirt.

He'd pulled Fundy closer and hadn't cared. He's pretty pogchamp like that.)

///

The breaking point comes when Dream starts trying to make Tommy feel incapable.

Scratch that - Dream has been doing that for months, very slowly. But the breaking point is when Tommy lifts his shield to block a skeleton's arrow, only for Dream to rush in and block it for him. Dream kills it with one axe-blow, then turns and clutches at Tommy's upper arms with wide eyes, all frenzied worry.

"Are you alright?" he asks, quick and frantic. "Tommy, did it hit you? Are you alright?"

Tommy hadn't even known he was nearby, but Dream either mistakes his shocked staring as something else or decides to twist it to his advantage. He starts to pat Tommy down, arms to his hands then back up to his shoulders, starting to lift the flimsy leather of his chestplate up so that he can check his torso -

Tommy flails his arms until Dream stops. Wariness starts to creep in under his fake confusion, and Tommy's mind whirls to snuff it out before Dream starts looking too closely. (His only defense hinges on Dream thinking he's a stupid kid, he _can't -)_

"I'm fine," he says. "I'm fine, it didn't hit me -"

One of Dream's hands creeps back over the space between them, gently cradling his face and turning it from side to side. Tommy knows that it's one of Dream's tricks, but he hasn't been touched by anyone in months and he leans into Dream's warm palm, helpless.

Dream's voice softens. It's still fake, but the wariness is gone. "Are you sure? It had an enchanted bow."

Irritation swirls in Tommy's stomach. He'd gone _looking_ for mobs, the anger that has been building in him for days finally reaching boiling point. Logstead is a series of torches in every direction, neatly gridded and awful. Everything is sorted into neat little squares, one after the other after the other. Dream had wanted to clear the trees, saying that he didn't want there to be anywhere they'd missed, but Tommy had managed to convince him not to.

He'd felt like he was playing into Dream's hands the entire time. There had certainly been the smugness of Dream successfully tricking him, but no matter how Tommy turns it over in his head he can't think of what it was.

It scares him, that he's lost in some way he has no idea about - but Dream is very good at twisting fear into things he can use, so Tommy turns it into anger instead. He doesn't like it, but anger is easy to understand after so many wars, can be weaponised or blown into steam so that the emotion disappears.

(He blows up his own stuff by accident once. He spends the rest of the day sat on his bed, eyes wide and cold down to his bones, unable to tell if it was a genuine accident or something Dream had brainwashed him into somehow.)

"I can handle an enchanted bow," Tommy says before he can stop himself.

"Tommy. . ." Dream sighs. "You shouldn't have to. Skeletons are dangerous. And I know that you're used to fighting mobs from living in L'Manburg, but that's because L'Manburg is dangerous too. It's nicer here, isn't it? Where you don't have to worry about mobs?"

Tommy's breath stops in his chest. So this is the angle.

His hands start to tremble again. He's being confronted with it so suddenly, he doesn't - he has no idea how to counter this, he hasn't sat down and tried to think of what Technoblade would say, how he can fight back.

Cornered, Tommy falls back on playing along.

"It is," he says. Dream's eyes fall on his trembling hands, and Tommy is scared already but he turns every other emotion into fear too so that he starts to cry. "Sorry," he chokes out, pretending that he's talking to anybody but Dream. He pictures Phil in front of him, wings loose with an encouraging smile, and only cries harder.

Dream pulls him into a hug. Tommy shoves his head into Dream's shoulder so that he can't see the lack of wings and chants, "I'm sorry," without really knowing why.


	2. invisible brain chess pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a wrestling match,,, I hope it lives up to the absolute love you lot poured onto the first chapter! Thank you ❤️
> 
> Also it's my birthday on the 25th (two days!!), can I get a pog for turning 20 ayooo lmao

Three days later, Dream tries something else.

He's been around more often, only seeming encouraged by Tommy's run-in with the skeleton and the hug Tommy had let happen afterwards. He still feels off-kilter inside, part of him remembering the warmth of the hug and the other half feeling repulsed that he'd let Dream get that close, had let his guard down enough for Dream to slip past like that.

There's a hug now for every time Dream comes and every time he leaves. Tommy can't decide if it's a blessing or a curse. 

Anyway.

It's been four days since the first hug. Maybe five: Tommy's stuck lying awake in the middle of the night, head turned to one side to watch the fabric of his tent ripple in the ocean breeze. It might be past midnight already, or it might be just before.

He's avoiding. He keeps doing this - he can't sleep, too worried about thinking of a counter for Dream's weird babying tactic. But the only real idea he has is to run away, and the idea is so tempting that he can't think of anything else.

Tommy rolls over with a scowl, away from the tent wall. He can't just run. He can't - if he doesn't make a clean getaway and Dream catches him, then the game will be up. Underestimation is the only weapon he has: there's nothing else, no aces up his sleeve, no friends he can call in at the last minute.

If he's a little too lax in keeping his guard up and lets something slip, or if he gets too excited about leaving soon and doesn't hide one of his stashes well enough, or if Dream realises that Tommy has been silently, furiously fighting back this entire time -

He's lost.

 _But if you get away,_ a treacherous voice whispers. It's quiet and broken but it's still familiar, the same warmth that's stayed with Tommy for so long. Hope.

He hates it. Hope has done nothing but hurt him.

 _Go,_ it whispers anyway. It sounds like Wilbur, before Pogtopia when he'd been able to tell Tommy was in a mood from just one glance. It sounds like Phil, who'd always known how to say things in a way that sounded like unshakable fact. _You don't deserve this. Go; run._

He opens his eyes and glares into the darkness. "Where would I even go," Tommy hisses back, harsh in the quiet. Even the noise of the sea seems to dull. "I can't go back to L'Manburg, that's the first place he'd look."

 _Live on your own,_ comes the suggestion. 

That sounds worse than exile. Dream may not be his friend like he's claiming, Tommy may be going slowly insane with paranoia out here fighting invisible brain chess, but -

At least he's not alone.

(Ghostbur has been gone for so long. He misses his family.)

///

Dream likes to arrive in a lot of different ways. Tommy's not sure if it's just the man's personality - he _does_ seem to get bored of doing the same routine over and over - or if he's trying to keep Tommy guessing, but the end result is the same. He spends a lot of time glancing over his shoulder, jumping at shadows.

Today he's sailing in, coming straight from the east. The sun's barely risen, and it hurts to look, but that's fine: Tommy will take any excuse not to look at him.

Tommy waits for the sound of the sand scraping against the bottom of Dream's boat and tries not to think about leaving. L'Manburg is somewhere to the south south, he knows that. _Purely hypothetically,_ he wouldn't want to go east or west either, in case he got turned around and Dream appeared to stop him from getting too close and saw the full pack on his shoulders. 

So he'd have to go north.

What's up north? Snow, he remembers that. He thinks Tubbo might have gone out that way and found a massive oak forest once, one that had stretched for thousands of blocks. Although he's _in_ an oak biome, now that he thinks about it - it could very well be the same biome. That's no help, then, not really.

Spruce trees are near tundra, Tommy thinks, not sure what's helpful, and then he catches the crunch of Dream's boots as he leaves the boat and his entire body goes tense. 

He can't let himself think about leaving. He can't even _consider_ it - Dream is too powerful, he's too smart. Tommy can't even predict when he'll come to visit - how is he meant to time it so he gets as far a headstart as possible? 

Dream is walking up to him, mask lifted just enough to see his warm (fake, fake, it's a disguise, he's _studying_ you) smile. Tommy is starting to think that he might not be able to maximise his chances.

He might just need to wait until he thinks it's the right time, then run like hell without looking back.

Dread pours in rivulets down his back and mixes with anticipation, leaving him sweaty and nervous. Those aren't good odds. 

"Good morning, Tommy," Dream says.

"Morning," Tommy greets, trying to sound excited to see him. Forcing something welcoming onto his face, he watches as Dream's hands slip into his hoodie pocket. They don't pull anything out, and it doesn't seem like he has a weapon in there he's fiddling with, but Tommy keeps an eye on the pocket anyway. 

"I brought you breakfast," Dream says cheerfully. He pulls his hands back out of his pocket. One second his hands are as empty as before, and the next he's holding something red and square, something that looks like a -

Shulker box.

(It's pretty fucking hard not to stare after that.)

"I know, I know," Dream says, as though he hasn't killed people without a blink for bending lesser rules than _don't go to the end._ "Breaking the rules, blah blah blah. But hey, anything for friends, right?"

Tommy's mind whirls. His _stomach_ whirls, empty and as wary about this new development as he is.

Anything for friends, Dream had said. He's laughing: sheepishly, yeah, but still a laugh. He'd got Tubbo to exile Tommy over accidentally burning a little bit of George's house and here he was, months later, holding the embodiment of breaking the rules like it meant nothing and saying _anything for friends_ and _laughing._

"Right," he says faintly.

Dream sets the box on the floor, seeming satisfied with that. Tommy hasn't seen a shulker box in person before, and he startles back when the top half comes off in a loud twist. It's the same size as a single chest inside, and filled with food - stacks of bread, a cake, cooked steak and baked potatoes. There are apples in there too, though none of them are golden.

Dream's talking as he unpacks some of it. "I got Niki to help me with - oh."

He stops.

Tommy stops too, hands faltering where they'd been reaching out to brush curious fingers over the top. The awe fades in his chest: he wants Dream to finish the sentence, to tell him how Niki's doing. But Dream expects him to be heartbroken and barely coping so he holds his breath and lets his eyebrows cinch together, small and hurt. 

"Sorry," Dream gushes. Fuck him for actually sounding _apologetic._ "I won't - I forgot that I shouldn't mention her."

 _Mention her,_ Tommy shouts in his head. He bangs his fists on the walls, the floor, caged and frustrated, scared, _mention her, mention everyone, how are they, how are they -_

"Right," Tommy says again instead. 

He wants the bread and the cake, so badly it scares him. He's only been eating the food Dream brings and it's always meat, cooked chicken or steak if he's lucky. He can only get apples once in a blue moon; sugary frosting and fresh loaves of bread are the telltale sign of hallucinations. They're also the exact thing he craves, stupidly but with a desperation that goes deeper than just hunger.

Niki's bakery, him and Tubbo laughing in the sunlight. Wilbur, laughing and _alive,_ ruffling Tommy's hair as he sits down to birthday dinner. Better memories than the ones he drowns in here, day after day after day.

Tommy realises that he's on the verge of tears, but he reaches out and only takes Dream's stuff even though it hurts. He leans back with armfuls of the same things he's been eating for months, tilts his jaw up, and tries to decide if Dream noticing he's upset would be a good thing or not. 

"Keep the rest," he says, voice thick around his own reluctance. He makes his face sad and angry and hopes that Dream will take this as a victory and not realise the truth. "I don't need L'Manburg's handouts."

Dream's mouth opens a little in surprise then curls, smug and satisfied. Dream is prey to his own fucking arrogance. Tommy hates him hates him _hates_ him.

"Sorry, Tommy," he repeats after a moment. He sounds impressed, underneath all the fake sympathy - but it's with himself, not with Tommy. Impressed that he beat him this much.

He thinks he feels sick.

"I won't do that again," Dream assures.

///

(He leaves the red shulker box with Tommy when he goes. Tommy doesn't expect it, but he takes it in stride: there's a thorough inspection for anything hidden, first, and when he finds nothing the shulker box is pried up from the stand and squirreled away into his enderchest.

If Dream asks for it back, as a surprise test, then it's not anywhere suspicious. Tommy can just claim he didn't want Dream's item to be stolen, so he put it there to keep it safe. 

And if he doesn't ask for it back...

Portable storage doesn't sound like the worst thing.)

///

Dream comes back the next day by trident. He doesn't ask for the shulker back; he kills Mushroom Henry instead. 

(It's not a punishment for yesterday. Dream has been glancing funny at Mushroom Henry for weeks.)

Tommy had stubbornly refused to love him, not after the real Henry, but he can't deny the hollow grief in his chest as he watches Dream wave away the smoke.

"Cows are dangerous," Dream tells him earnestly. His mask is over his mouth today, but it doesn't hide the delight undermining everything he says. Tommy hasn't reacted to any of these slip-ups, though: maybe he just thinks Tommy's too numb, or too stupid. "Henry could have stepped on your foot and crushed it, and where would you have been then?"

Mushroom Henry had licked the tears from Tommy's face and mooed softly at him whenever his breathing started to come too quickly.

 _He was tied up,_ he wants to scream. _He was just fuckin' spinning._

"You're right," he says instead. The effort to not react is too much: he's sure he must look blank, tired. Dream seems pleased anyway. "Thank you."

"I'm just looking after you," Dream agrees. A hand comes up to ruffle his hair. Tommy closes his eyes, but the callouses are too different to pass off as Wilbur's.

He tries anyway.

"The world out there is dangerous," Dream continues. "I'd do anything to keep you safe, even if it hurts. You understand, don't you, Tommy? It's for your own good."

The air still smells faintly like cow and mushrooms, if he focuses. Ghostbur hasn't been around for weeks. Tommy has been alone for even longer, desperately holding his own pieces together as Dream shatters them one by one. 

He needs to leave. Sooner rather than later.

"For my own good," Tommy echoes, but in the privacy of his head he lets it mean something different.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this made you hate Dream enough again
> 
> Also if you spotted any glaring mistakes then please tell me!! It's 2am and I'm tired so I'm struggling to spot any but I'm sure there's at least 1 of the little shits. Ty in advance & hope you all have great days 🎉✌️


End file.
